The Vault Unlocked - How AI is Raising the Bar at Every Job (Most People Haven't Felt It Yet)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Can you delegate tasks successfully to other human beings? Sean Campbell, founder of Cascade Insights, says that single answer predicts who wins with AI better than any technical skill ever will. Sean spent years inside competitive intelligence and market research for some of the biggest technology brands in the world, studying why people adopt new technology and what gets in their way. Today at Cascade Insights, his team steps into a company, picks a job role, a team, or a business process, and rebuilds it with AI in the room.

Starting point is 00:00:36 He also teaches AI at George Fox University, so he sees both sides, what founders need today and what the next generation of sellers walks in expecting. Then he names the one thing he says to start following right now because it is coming faster than AI did. This is the vault. Let's unlock it. Sean, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me on, man. Yeah, I'm excited.

Starting point is 00:01:10 I know we were just talking about the world of AI. And you come from a unique background where you're teaching people AI, but you also been behind some of the biggest businesses and some of the know-hows of where these AIs are coming from and whatnot. So I'm excited to kind of dive in to talk about, well, where is AI today? Where is it going? How do you see where it goes? And, you know, everything in between. Yeah, yeah, looking forward to you, man.

Starting point is 00:01:37 So tell us a little bit about who Sean is. Where did Sean and AI meet? Well, my experience with AI kind of grew in a foundation that my entire professional career, you know, I'm 55, so I'm squarely Gen X, has always been at some kind of service or engagement around how people adopt technology, meaning, you know, I left my master's degree and basically promptly started teaching people how to use networking databases, programming systems, you know, all that kind of stuff. Then I found a company that does competitive intelligence work initially and then market research work

Starting point is 00:02:21 as well with extremely leading technology brands. Again, you know, like the Microsofts, the Googles, the Salesforce, you know, et cetera. And we, so we're spending years and years and years trying to understand like, okay, why do people adopt technology? what moves them to adopt technology, you know, what gets in the way. And all along that time, I've also had multiple stints on a college campus where I've been a professor kind of engaging with students around, you know, different aspects of that same problem. So sometimes I sum it up and I'm like, I've kind of had both a professional and an academic

Starting point is 00:02:58 stint as professor in a way, right? You know, lots of research, lots of training, lots of observing, lots of mentoring. And so where I'm at now, the AI specific is about three years ago, I'm like, like everybody else, I'm like, okay, well, this is changing everything. This is bigger than every other tech change, you know, step change wise. And I don't want people to get run over by it. You know, my heart as an operator, you know, a guy who's owned a couple businesses is, I looked at it from that angle. And I'm like, I don't, you know, there's going to be people who won't get it and they won't move fast enough. And then I was looking at it from the perspective of can I get back into the university system and actually teach students this.

Starting point is 00:03:40 And that led to a role where I'm an assistant professor of artificial intelligence at George Fox University. And I'm also the AI integration lead for the MBA program there. And obviously there's lots of discussion at the university level just of how should we integrate this. And I can speak to some things I see in the College of Business. but I think it's reasonable to assume that, you know, any department on any campus is probably trying to figure out what they do with it. And then then you're talking about what does that mean for future generation? Like this morning, I was talking about AI in sales in the class because I cover a bunch of different job roles. And I said, you know, I could give examples if you want me

Starting point is 00:04:21 to get into examples because we did some cool stuff. But, but I basically said trying to set the kids into the framework of, you know, let's try to figure out what this is going to be like. when you leave here in four years, you know, in your first sales job, what is AI going to actually do for you? And what should it not do for you? And, you know, what does it mean for your career? So, you know, I find myself in kind of this interesting position. I guess you'd sum it up of like, you know, I'm researching what's happening while working for some of the guys who are making leading AI solutions. At the same time, I'm teaching and mentoring on the college campus. And then the third thing is we help companies meaningfully adopt AI. Like, we deal with all this like,

Starting point is 00:04:59 reimagining the job and what does it mean to basically, you know, change a sales or marketing or HR role with AI in the room. And, you know, it's a lot of fun. It's also really chaotic. Not in the sense of, I think, like, my work output is chaotic. But I think I do good work. But, you know, man, like every single day there is something new. And if you're really trying to keep everything current, that's, which I do, right? That's a big, big deal. It's a huge deal. That's the challenge. I would say that's one of the challenges for sure, I think, well, there's the adoption of AI, which I mean, and you say yourself earlier, people who've yet to adopt it, I would like to say they're so behind. They're not actually behind, but they're going

Starting point is 00:05:48 to get behind pretty quickly. There's the adoption of AI, but then there's the change, the rate of what AI is changing at every day. How do you stay on? top of it. Well, I mean, I could get really tactical and I'd probably start there. But I mean, like, you know, I have probably, I don't know, probably 75 subs stacks. I know what I mean? Like that are that are just kind of old school ways show up in my inbox. It's more than that that I go do. But, you know, I use a male client called superhuman. So everything kind of goes up into a folder and a filter basically. And then I have an AI go process through that and kind of tell me what's the stuff I should pay more attention to. I particularly use Claude and I have some

Starting point is 00:06:28 skills to kind of pull that together. I find myself still sometimes reading certain pieces. You know, there's a guy Ziv. I think his substack is like, don't forget about the base. I love his substack. It's really long, though sometimes. But even so, like, its length is what draws me in sometimes. Like, there's a narrative that you sometimes lose, no matter how good your AI is summarizing something that makes you think. And then I've got a grok bot that just bangs away at X all day. I mean, for anybody listening who's not tried GROC, now that GROC bot exists, you need to go try GROC.

Starting point is 00:07:01 Like, I mean, that is, you know, all these AI platforms have had a moment where everybody went, wait a minute, let me go try that one now. I think GrockBot is that moment for GROC, basically. And yeah, and then it's just a whole bunch of just collecting, synthesizing, compiling, you know, where AIs have a role in that. But I would say it all starts from really good

Starting point is 00:07:25 creation around what you follow. You know, I probably spent three years now slowly like subscribing to a newsletter for a week and going noise and leaving and subscribing to one for three years and going, this one has a lot of value, right? Because there's a lot of parroting in the space too. I mean, you could go pull up five substack newsletters and realize they all basically just said the same thing. You know, so I'm usually looking for somebody from an editorial standpoint has kind of a

Starting point is 00:07:50 lean. And not just one lean, right? I mean, I probably come off and it's probably legitimate. I'm probably more pro-AI than I'm anti-AI. But I'm not 100% pro-AI. But I have subsdacks that are very much designed to make me read stuff I disagree with. There's one called Blood Against the Machine or Blood in the Machine. I forget the name of it.

Starting point is 00:08:14 This guy hates AI. I mean, maybe if he was on the show, he'd be like, no, I don't really mean it that way. I'm like, well, I don't know. I mean, the title of your substack kind of gives it away, I think. But like, you know what I mean? Like, it seems a lot of nuance in that. But I read that guy because I'm like, okay, I don't want to follow the trap of just all the tech hype around it. You know what I mean?

Starting point is 00:08:32 I want to really like make sure I'm reading that other side of it. You know, same thing with creatives, right? You know, I've got stuff I follow that's like creatives who are gung ho about it and obviously a lot of creatives who are not. But that, that I think comes from, I have kind of a bit of an informal motto. Like by the time it gets 55, you probably have 20 of them, right? But like one of them is read stuff you disagree with. Like, yeah. I think the whole world would be better if they just made that a bumper sticker and we were all forced to go do that.

Starting point is 00:08:59 Read stuff we disagree with. Well, because you know you don't read it all the way to the end. Right? I mean, most people don't. I mean, if you said, did you read stuff you disagree with in the last 10 hours? Most people would be like, the headline. Then I stopped. You know what I mean?

Starting point is 00:09:14 And so it really takes an act of will, I think, to actually like fill your filter with stuff that maybe on the surface you kind of like grumble when you're done reading it. You're like, yet again, you know, more blood. You know what I mean? But you're like, no, but somewhere deep down, that's like, like, either, either it's helping me reinforce what I believe about AI, or it's making me back off a position that maybe I held more strongly than I should, you know, at the end of the day. I don't know. That's just one of the things I've always felt. You could extend that to regular business thinking, too. I think that impacts a lot of things. So what's your thoughts? Because I thought I saw something. This is at the global stage, but I thought saw something where in, I think it was

Starting point is 00:09:55 a Finland or one of the Norwegian countries, they've banned AI in schools where in China, obviously, it's quite opposite. What do you think the impact of that's going to be? Massive. I mean, I mean, literally, there's a single word

Starting point is 00:10:11 massive. I mean, there's so much about pacing the frontier, which if, if people that have read, you know, that post knows exactly what that means, this idea that like we're we can meaningfully slow AI, right? And I'm terrified just like everybody else. I mean, like, you know, I don't want to be flying a plane one day and AI decides we don't

Starting point is 00:10:33 need planes anymore. You know what I mean? And all of a sudden like, you know, the planes in the ground, right? You know, but but there's kind of this weird belief system that isn't, um, isn't meta enough, right? I mean, it's like, okay, I'm going to remove AI from my K through 12 school district. I'm going to remove AI from my college campus. I'm going to have a red-green stoplight system and that will be good enough. When that was dead a year ago, like, I mean, the idea that like you could just say don't use AI, like, I mean, it doesn't really even compute even. I mean, you're actually forcing kids to cheat because the minute they use grammarly, they're using AI. You know what I mean? So like there's there's all these things that just don't make sense,

Starting point is 00:11:13 you know. But you have to, I mean, we live in a global world. I mean, China has really, and I I have to be careful because I mean, I'm not trying to like denigrate an entire country, right? But like clearly there's a leadership system that thinks differently than let's say a democracy, right? It clearly, I mean, just just has to be. So maybe they're going to make some pretty different decisions about how they want to use or weaponize or leverage AI and robotics in ways that I don't think we want to wake up and have no meaningful counter. And I think maybe the best argument for why it's hard to slow is what happened. with hugging face. The hugging face attack that, you know, everybody tends to use as like this

Starting point is 00:11:56 harboringer of like, okay, that can happen, is, which they should, is they ended up being able to defeat it by using another AI model. Yeah. Right. So it's like, you look at that and you're like, okay, come on, man. I mean, like, we can't keep just, you know, and yet just letting it just run ahead like crazy and what it would mean to the development of kids and all kinds of things. I mean, like, those are real questions. Well, that's the, you know, the critical thought, right? Like someone was telling me that the challenge that's going to happen is like my our era, right?

Starting point is 00:12:31 We had to grow up with this idea of like critical thought. Like we had to do some critical thinking. We had to, we didn't have the answers. Nowadays, they don't even, you know, kids, if they're using AI every day, like, you don't actually have to have that critical thought. You just ask AI. Other side of me goes, but they're also going to be that much more. more knowledgeable, more powerful?

Starting point is 00:12:51 Like, there's both sides that you can argue. Well, it's funny because that there's two things about that. One, on the critical judgment side, right, it's interesting because that's such a quick thing people say. And I agree with you, by the way. I agree. Like, that's what we need to develop in young people. If you grew up in analog, you know, Gen X, so we grew up with paper maps, believe it or

Starting point is 00:13:11 not, right? You know what I mean? That kind of thing, right? So, like, you know, we had to develop our judgment in a non-digital form to start. and even the digital form when it first came out, it was archaic compared to now, right? And so, but that alone is a challenge both professionally and academically because, you know, if I looked at you right now and I said, you know what,

Starting point is 00:13:33 you lack judgment. There's a small part of every human's brain that gets slightly irritated. You know what I mean? Like, what do you mean? Like, kind of like we almost assume we have judgment, do you know? And so what does that mean to train that? You know, go walk into a room full of millennials and say, you lack judgment. Okay.

Starting point is 00:13:53 I'd like to see what happens after that. You know what I mean? That'll be fun to watch, right? You know, and yet, and yet that we're saying like, that's what we've got to develop. So there's, there's, now that's solvable by restructuring how we educate and receive information, but that takes time. But to your other point, like just today, this week, it's AI and sales in the class. Next week, it's AI and creatives.

Starting point is 00:14:14 Next week after that, it's AI in marketing and then AI and HR. And I go through all these different job roles. have like a hackathon week and all this stuff. But I did an exercise where I said, I'll try to make this brief. You can unpack more in this if you want because it totally ties into what you're saying about that high, low, that you can just cheat and do it badly, but you could also be like super empowered. So I said, this is a college campus, but I've done this in professional rooms just

Starting point is 00:14:38 with more of like a work example. But I said, okay, so pitch the university at a new cafeteria supplier, right? A new food service management company. Because, you know, who likes the cafeteria in the college that go to, right? So I'm like, okay, go ahead and write two pitch emails. And I said, you get to have all these different roles. One of you has to be the researcher. One of you has to do this.

Starting point is 00:14:57 You know, think of it like they're doing day one on a sales job for food service management company. And so guess what happened? After me giving them all the nudges, use AI as a boxing companion, you know, red team and everything else, there was at least a couple teams that five minutes into this exercise wanted to ship me their finished email. And I stopped it. And I said, this is way, way too early for you to be done. Like you have superpowers available to you. You need to, I mean, I had like about 30 minutes for this activity, including reviewing the emails that they put up on the screen.

Starting point is 00:15:35 But here's the flip side. At the end of it, I said, just like you're talking about, you're way better off than day one of any sense. sales rep that joined a job pre-AIA if you know what you're doing if you red team it if you really think it through if you search effective subject lines if you search good structures if you know you know where i'm going with this right like this is this a big and they immediately saw the high low and i could see him go yeah i was kind of tempted to cheat but on the other hand on the other hand i could be pretty powerful on day one if i want to be and then i said and guess what that'll be the bar. When you leave here, that's the bar. So get used to that. We're going to take a short break

Starting point is 00:16:22 to thank today's partners. Let's be honest, most people spend more time researching a new laptop than they do researching their own investments. That is a mistake. If you're a business owner, investor, or someone who follows markets because you want to understand where the economy is headed, you need good information, not more noise. That's why I want to tell you about Weiss Ratings Plus. Weiss provides independent ratings and research across stocks, ETS, cryptocurrencies, banks, and more, helping investors evaluate opportunities using data instead of hype.

Starting point is 00:16:55 If you're looking for a smarter way to research investments and make more informed financial decisions, Weiss rating plus is worth a look. Go to WeissVolt.com and learn more today. That's W-E-I-S-V-A-U-L-T dot com. It's interesting because, well let me ask you this because you're actually in the school systems and you're in the university systems what what are what's the the energy like right now with AI are they adopting it are

Starting point is 00:17:27 they excited about it are they hesitant of it like I know I have some professor like professors in my network they're just waiting they're waiting the day you know that AI takes over for them right and I think I still live in this world where I'm naive to want to believe that we still need humans. AI is not going to be taking over everything yet. Quantum, you know, we had to count the computing is coming,

Starting point is 00:17:51 but it's just interesting because these kids are in school right now. And for me, I think about it and I've heard this. We don't even know the jobs. Like my children are three and six right now. The jobs that they're going to be doing in the next 20 years, we don't even know, like they don't even exist yet.

Starting point is 00:18:11 We don't even know what they're going to be. Well, there's a lot in what you just said. So to hit a couple high points, we can dig into any of it, right? First off, I mean, the university has like a chancellor, provost, whatever. So I can't really like what the university thinks isn't, isn't me. What I can tell you, though, is like in the College of Business where I'm at. And what I've seen from what I observed from other universities and even what I observe when you go peer inside an organization that's trying to adopt AI, I think the first

Starting point is 00:18:44 filter that starts to impact things is role because um is role is role because if you if you think about like like in a department you may think you're growing up a bunch of accountants or you may think you're growing a bunch of future marketers or you may think you're growing a bunch of future sellers or economists or whatever and and in a business it's obviously like those roles plus other ones right and i think what happens is it's the degree of awareness of that person as to like how deep the AI water really is in that job. You know, the partnership that person is going to have to have with AI. Because I've said now for a couple years, we never get away for the rest of time.

Starting point is 00:19:28 And I know somebody says that. You're like, how could you be right? I think I'm right. For the rest of time having to decide every morning, what do I give to AI and what do I keep? Even when AI gets more autonomous, it's still the same problem. We just moved it up in abstraction, right? I still have to make the same decision. So every young person gets to wrestle with that everywhere.

Starting point is 00:19:48 And my point about role-based is some people, I think, see where their role is going better than others. Does that make sense? They can see where it's going. And so they're willing to accept that. And they're willing to kind of understand that. And then there's other people who are just either more resistant or they haven't seen what's possible yet.

Starting point is 00:20:05 I mean, like one of the biggest divides right now, I think is people who use AI platforms. I don't want to say just like chat, because chat's pretty powerful, right? I mean, like it is. I mean, you can do amazing things in a long-running chat session. It's not, you know, people send it like throw shade at it now. They're like, ah, you're just chatting. I'm like, well, we can do some pretty cool things with chat. But there's somebody else who's like automating and driving their entire computer with

Starting point is 00:20:33 computer use. And that camp, to paraphrase a CEO, I heard say this once, the one that's just prompting thinks the other guys are just doing magic. And the ones that are doing magic can't possibly understand why the prompting people aren't over here with them. You know what I mean? And that gap gets in the way. And why is that? Because it's moving so fast.

Starting point is 00:20:53 Right. I mean, and that ties into the job role thing you mentioned, right? You're right. We don't know the easy out for people when they talk about job disruption. Because, you know, obviously, if you stand in front of a room full of either young business professionals who are in job or young students, you get obviously an immediate question of like, is my job going to be around? And I know the easy out sometimes is like, well, we don't know the jobs that we're going to have. I mean, we, you know, we had, you know, steam, you know, wheel engineer, you know, and then we all of a sudden had, like, diesel mechanic. And like, clearly, like, look at that.

Starting point is 00:21:25 There were jobs. They were both mechanical. And I'm like, great. You know, that took like three generations, right? Yeah. This is differing. This, you can't, you know, this happens in like a year. You know what I mean?

Starting point is 00:21:36 Like, we no longer need any medical transcriptionists, evermore. okay where do they all go you know and that is what i want people to be honest about you know and that's what i think people innately know so so and then to tie one other thing i don't know if this hit all the points but like you know you mentioned your kid's age right i think the hardest job and i told this to somebody else who's like uh kind of works with uh administrators of k through 12 school districts that the university we were talking about ai use and uh that's kind of the role she has. And so I said, you know what's the hardest job in all education now? K through 12 administrator. Because what a K through 12 administrator or principal or district head? Because how in the

Starting point is 00:22:26 world do you honestly say that the curriculum you've designed, which we know exists in a book somewhere or online of how you take a kindergartner through senior year of high school? How in the world do you actually know what that endpoint is 12 years from now you know what i mean like what i mean like what i mean college is hard enough man i mean it's hard enough for me to stand in front of a room full of freshmen and make statements like you know sales is going to be different when you leave here in four years and that's true but like you know how much different right is it going to be right that you know like but i can maybe draw a trend line like maybe i can be like okay i could kind of even if it hockey sticks i can be like okay i think that's safe to say but but what what

Starting point is 00:23:08 What are we doing with that, right? I mean, like, you know, what, you know, that's, that's hard. And then that also has the other piece of it, which is, and this is true of a lot of things. I think people say this is true of education, but it's also true professionally is we're rapidly reaching a point where you, I'll give you a concrete example. Let me put it this way. Like, we're rapidly reaching a point where you can do a lot by knowing what the thing is. You don't have to actually have done the thing.

Starting point is 00:23:40 So say you talk to an accountant who says, you know, I need to grow up a bunch of young accountants and they need to learn a cruel-based accounting. And to learn a cruel-based accounting professionally or educationally, you know, they need to actually build a spreadsheet, put items in it, make journal entries, and then eventually make it all add up. And now they learn a cruel-based accounting. My argument would be for a lot of things that we consider craft that we learned manually, like we drove Stick Shift to learn it, you know, what's really important for a lot of

Starting point is 00:24:10 those things now, not all of them, but an increasing amount of them is the ability to know what it is so you can direct a system to do it for you, which is a huge step change in like professional life and academic life. Because for me to know what a cruel based accounting is and tell a system to give it back to me in a cruel based accounting requires a lot less time and a different level of judgment and reason than the other way around. And that's true of everything. That's like every single thing we're confusing like the time it took us to learn the craft with the time it takes other people to learn the craft. And I think we haven't really quite wrestled with that one honestly. I think that you know, you can blame young people for some things and older people

Starting point is 00:24:53 for some things and middle people for some things. I think that's one that we haven't quite dealt with yet. Is that the speed of which we can learn? Well, it's more it's more that we wanted we want to define mentoring or pre-pretingizing or educating someone, business or academic, in a way that was defined pre-AI. There are literally things that they don't need to know how to do manually. They just don't. And are we really thinking about that when we're shaping a new seller in their first year or a new market? And I would argue we're not.

Starting point is 00:25:27 I would argue some of that. And even the, you know, even the evaluation systems will need to change, right? Like a really good concrete example of that, right? Like, you know, I use this with professional audiences and students a lot. I'm like, okay, the bar for visual communication is massively going up. And everybody goes, yep, I've seen that. I've seen nanobanana. I've seen Chatchapute Image 2.5.

Starting point is 00:25:48 I know I have. But if you thought about what that means, because that means the next time you build a deck, if you want to raise because you built a cool deck, the hard deck exists now. You've got to go way better than that. And sellers and everybody, you know, like the, all of a sudden that'll filter through it because we're humans. We're all of a sudden like, yeah, I'm bored with that. That's new.

Starting point is 00:26:08 What do you got? I've seen amazing decks, right? I've seen amazing emails. I've seen it, you know, and all of a sudden, everybody's like, wait a minute, now it's hard again. And I'm like, yeah, I get used to that. It is, it's interesting you say that. It's like, it's hard because now you have, it's almost like people, like, I'll just

Starting point is 00:26:24 use this example, like graphic designers or like graphic designers are going to be thing of the past. And I'm like, if you're a good graphic designer, you're more needed than ever before because everybody knows AI slop. You could see the AI slop. Well, right. And the other thing is, this is a little bit in the weeds, but there's a very different paradigm if you're going to, like,

Starting point is 00:26:44 interact with an AI to create visuals. You know, like really good people put things in like, you know, the focal link to the camera and the angle of the shot and where things are put. You know, now, I think, I think that's, that goes back to what I said earlier. Is that a learnable thing? Because it's very different. It's exactly. It's exactly.

Starting point is 00:27:01 I didn't intend to bring it up. way, but that craft thing, it's right there too, right? I can take a room full of students and have them put an image or a video clip in that they love and have the AI interpret it and give them back photographer or videographer language for how that was created. Now, I know this is derivative, right? But you could argue everything's kind of derivative, right? You know, we start with that, right? And say, okay, now you know how to, and I know there's probably some graphics that are, but they don't know how to talk like me. I said, that's not my point. I'm saying they have new, language to use that they wouldn't normally use, right? And now they start to use that language

Starting point is 00:27:38 and those constructs to direct the AI. You see where I'm going with that? Like, that's a different, it's a different thing then. And now, how much of that craft do they need to know? Do they walk around with a camera bag with 17 different lenses in it? I don't know if they need to do that to learn how to pick the right lens for an AI image. But they certainly need to know something more than just what the AI tells them. But there's a whole dynamic in that. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:28:05 Well, that. And nowadays, how much, I don't know if you've ever seen even with chat, for instance, like the false information. Like I found like when AI first started, it was good. I feel like it's getting stupid. Like the generic models are getting more stupid or the false information where you're like, that's not actually not right. And then it says, oh, yeah, sorry.

Starting point is 00:28:23 You're right. I was wrong. Right. So now there's so much misinformation as well. So I still think there is. Yeah. that need, like you're saying, you still need to have the knowledge. You got like AI, I always say AI is only as good as the prompter, as you know.

Starting point is 00:28:37 AI is only as good as the person who can ask the questions or write questions. And you can try to learn. I know what you're saying is you can indirectly learn the questions to ask and then ask it. But I still think there's still a nuance to understanding, like to know or to understand. Those are very different things. No, and I agree with that. I mean, the thing I've said for a couple years now is if you want me to predict, at least with AI as it stands today.

Starting point is 00:29:03 The biggest, if I look into someone's past and I only got like one skill to ask them about and anything this reductionist is going to leave some stuff on the side, but I really think it plays out. It seems to have played out every time. I go, are you a good delegator to humans? And if I can prove your good delegator to humans,

Starting point is 00:29:26 you set context, you set good boundaries, you set goals, you set conditions by which you bail, right? And you're like, don't do this. You know, you, those folks rock with AI every time. If they're a poor delegator to sell for other humans, they struggle because it's exactly what you're getting at. Like there's a moment of judgment and interpretation and looping and finishing and halting and all those things that people, I think, that are really good with AI, go,

Starting point is 00:29:55 well, why doesn't everyone else get it? And I'm like, because. back here in like human space land these people don't do this good well with he they don't do this well with humans so they're not going to do it well with AI they're not and you're doing it well which is also why i think operators business owners people have high agency jobs you know they tend to look at AI and feel like I don't get it why does everybody else not actually like leverage this the same way and I said because you know to paraphrase an owner who said this to me not that long ago she's like AI is the best intern I've ever had and the worst. And how do you shape the best in world, the best intern in the

Starting point is 00:30:35 world and the worst intern in the world? You delegate appropriately. You shape. You organize. You create. You new model. That's it. So how are you helping? I know you, you have a business where you're helping business owners implement or take on AI. Tell us a little bit more about that. Yeah. Well, so, you know, a couple, you know, there's three. Three legs of my stool of life, if you will, right? You know, there's like I'm teaching and I'm working at the university and then we're doing research and trying to understand what's happening in the marketplace. And the third leg is, you know, there's research about what AI is doing to like the marketplace,

Starting point is 00:31:12 but then there's also research inside a company about what it's doing to you, right? So what we do is we come in and we basically say, okay, give us a job role or give us a team or give us kind of a business process, if you will. And we come in and say, how can we reshape this? How can we recraft this with AI? And enable your people. Like that may be training, that may be mentoring, that may be building a limited number of actual kind of like pilots, if you will, to say, okay, you go run with this. So that you can walk out and be like, okay, that line between what I give to AI and human, that's really clear to me right now.

Starting point is 00:31:54 And then the other thing we do is we kind of like bring the frontier into the building. I mean, it's exhausting for these companies to figure out when was the, when is the new thing an important thing, right? When does it actually impact that job? Yeah. Right. And that's, um, that's another thing we do. But mostly we help them reimagine the work.

Starting point is 00:32:16 That's what we do. Because, you know, I, I wish it was easy for people, but I understand why it's not. It's even fundamental things. Like, how do I break my own job into these little silos that I can kind of safely give to AI and operationalize it? Right. And I feel it's pretty missional, to be honest, because like I said at the start, I just don't want people to get run over by this. You know, that's kind of my big thing, right? And I feel like if I can go in and help you get more with the people you have, well, then you can put that time to other good use at the end of the day.

Starting point is 00:32:53 And so anyway, that's basically that side of the business. And it's fun. It's a lot of fun. I mean, you know, people feel pretty empowered if it's delivered right. I think people feel that they can do things. They never even thought were possible before. And I see that in student size all the time. They're like, I didn't even think I could pull that off.

Starting point is 00:33:11 You know, it's, it's quite remarkable, like, what you can build with AI. I'll say this from in, and I have a, I would say, I have an understanding of AI. and I dabbled in an AI in code and all this stuff. But what I've even played with myself, like the mind's the limit at this point. There's nothing you can't do with AI. It's quite interesting. And people always, they always say,

Starting point is 00:33:36 how did you get started? Literally asked that question. Like, how do I get started with AI? That's what happened for me. And then next thing you know, I created a full on hiring software, specifically for salespeople, 97% efficacy in knowing that if they're

Starting point is 00:33:51 to be successful or not six months zero zero uh development skills full just commitment to the idea of that AI is is here and learn self taught and like it's not challenging but it takes time and you and like you said it changes so fast that's the problem it just changes so fast yeah i well i agree with that i mean the the MBA class that i'm going to teach in a couple weeks that i designed is is basically how you plus AI can create a company and how far can you get before you actually, in essence, hire another human. And that's just a different way of going after what you're talking about. I mean, the ability to kind of create in meaningful ways and powerful ways is there.

Starting point is 00:34:37 But even there, it requires a few things. It requires knowing where the frontiers at. It requires having kind of the instinct on what things I can box and put together and, you know, give to an AI meaningfully and all that kind of stuff. But I will admit, it's a super fun time to be like a creator. You know, I mean, even dorky little things, right? You know, like, I'll give you one. So like here's the ultimate and like tactical vibe coding, right?

Starting point is 00:35:03 You know, that I did like while I was probably doing eight other things with an AI the other day. Because that's the other thing if you work with them enough. You're like, I got eight things running all at the same time. And I'm like, so I can manage my Apple TV with my phone and it's got a remote app. But why does my Mac not have a remote app? That seems weird. My phone's on the other side of the room.

Starting point is 00:35:22 So I like open up Claude Code. I'm like, I would like a remote app for my app so I can manage my Apple TV, right? It's not in the OS. Like, why is it not in the OS? And I'm like, and, you know, six seconds later, I have maybe a little more than that, but I have this like remote. You know what I mean? And I think when you get people on that side of it, at least certain types of people,

Starting point is 00:35:45 it's pretty crazy and awesome, you know. Go ahead, yeah. Yeah, no, no, I love what you said when you just said, when you get the certain types of people that just even ask that question you ask, not afraid to actually prompt it and get the answer, that it is crazy. It's absolutely crazy where AI can come. And that's the scary, I think that is what's scary. And you and I, even today, I feel, and again, from what I know been AI, is like, we're talking Mickey Mouse level AI right now. Like, we even got to. I tell students all the time, this is as bad as it will ever be.

Starting point is 00:36:17 Yeah. I'll give you an example of what I saw today that's actually, gosh, I see if I've got it open it by sidebar because I don't. I think I shut it down. Anyway, I'll dig up the name if you want to put it in the show notes. I'll find it. But here's a good example of like, and then all of a sudden, sometimes a use case appears that you go, that was super obvious.

Starting point is 00:36:38 Why have I not seen that in a product? And then you go, oh, that changes everything. So you know, like, there's fathom and there's granola and there's all these tools that'll join your meeting. Right. Everybody wants the conversational intelligence. Everybody wants to, you know, fine. Those are great. So this one I saw just today said,

Starting point is 00:36:55 it's new pitches. We listen, but while we're listening, we build stuff while we're listening. And I went, what? So picture like you're actually sitting there in an internal meeting and one of you says, well,

Starting point is 00:37:05 that now first agenda item is done. We'll need to write an email to Bob about that, the director of plant operations or whatever. So this AI sits in the meeting. Does all the normal, well, I shouldn't say all. I didn't look at the feature comparison. I want the fathom guys to be like, it's not the same. You know, so like it does some of the stuff like fathom, I guess it joins the call and listens. But in the middle of the call, it goes, oh, here's the email already written.

Starting point is 00:37:29 Here's the couple slides you wanted. Here's, and I'm like, well, that was obvious. It's weirdly obvious, right? You know, and sure, you and I could vibe code some solution to Jackson or system audio and like, you know, goes, but I was like, well, yeah. Why wouldn't AI just get to work in the meeting once it intuits that were basically done, you know, or like I brought it up to somebody who's a seller in my team and we chatted about it. And she was like, I was like, imagine if it's writing the proposal while you're in the meeting. And she's like, yeah, I feel good about that, but I don't feel good about that. Because like part of that is my job is to come back with something unique. And I said, well, yeah, but on the other hand, co-creation probably helps win that deal because most proposals that feel

Starting point is 00:38:11 like they were kind of co-created in a way, right? The seller's got a job to do. But it has to feel like it's unique for that person, right? And I was thinking like, and stuff like that happens every day in this space. And that actually, I talked to students about that today. And I said, like, imagine what this is like in four years, right? Back to that idea, right? You can kind of chart that far out, not really, but it's better than K through 12, right? And I was like, so imagine four years of development of this.

Starting point is 00:38:39 And I pointed up at the screen. You know, what's it going to look like when you have a meeting? You'll get done with the meeting and the meeting will be done. and the AI will have built everything. Yeah. It's crazy. That'd be kind of cool. Also scary.

Starting point is 00:38:52 And then what do we go do? I guess we go to another meeting and we talk to a bunch more guys. We just devolved. I guess it's speed. It's speed. As we get to end here, where can people find you? Well, you can go to cascade insights.com.

Starting point is 00:39:06 You can also email me at Sean S-E-A-N at Cascade Insights.com. And you can also find me on LinkedIn, too. like if you go poke around. So we'll put all this in the snow notes for you as well. If you can leave people with one thing that they should be excited about with AI on a positive note, one thing to look forward to, one thing that they should be inspired by, one thing that they should understand that's coming through the pipe that you might know, but that you might know.

Starting point is 00:39:33 What would that be? Gosh, one thing. I would say like, and this is the geek in me, I'm super excited for the software of one. I mean, I'm regularly, like, bouncing into my kitchen and showing my wife who's only so impressed. Although, by the way, I'll leave you with this. I built software one for her. Like, I'll give you a super quick example. But that, like, we don't have to, like, take mass-produced software.

Starting point is 00:40:01 Like, we can build things that we want for ourselves and do so in, like, really amazing and cool ways. I think that's just going to be a gift that's going to keep giving, you know? And the example of my wife that I'm sure she wouldn't mind me saying in closing is she really, no problem with this. My wife's awesome, but she's a physical therapist. She's not a technologist by heart. So she is regularly going to me like, oh, I forgot to plug in my laptop. And it's sit and it's dead. You know what I mean? And so I built this little stupid battery app that shoots off fireworks and everything, every time she gets to 5%. And it's this huge honking thing that shows up in the middle of the screen, like, your battery is about to die, you know? And she looks at me, she's like, it's the best thing you

Starting point is 00:40:42 ever made for me. You know what I mean? And so like, I think, and that's going to lead to all kinds of interesting problems, we get to solve all kinds of stuff. What I will tell you, I know you ask for something optimistic, and I think this is kind of optimistic. It's not what I'm expecting. It's what I would tell people to pay attention to. As much as we talked about AI, also follow robotics. Yeah. That change, people will barely, if even get used to this change, and that one is right around the corner. And there's all kinds of cool stuff and scary stuff there too. But if you're not paying attention, I would immediately start subscribing to those substacks too. But anyway, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. Thanks for all the wealth of knowledge. And for those of you that

Starting point is 00:41:27 are listening, you just heard it. It's not just AI. It's also robotics. We'll maybe have you on to have that conversation. Sounds good, man. Okay. Thank you.

The Vault Unlocked - How AI is Raising the Bar at Every Job (Most People Haven't Felt It Yet)

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.